Cheong Soo Pieng

Private Asian Collection

Singapore, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Galleries, 1& 2, Soo Pieng, Singapore, 2 February - 3 March 2013, Bridget Tracy Tan

Bridget Tracy Tan, Soo Pieng, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Galleries 1 & 2, Singapore, 2013, P. 105, Colourplate

Excellent overall condition as viewed, as is the canvas, which is clear and taut. There is evidence of very light wear and handling to the edges of the canvas due to abrasions from frame, but this does not affect the overall image. The paint layers are healthy overall. Any inconsistency is due to the artist's working method. Examination under ultraviolet light reveals a small spot of restoration to blue pigment at upper left quadrant, another small area to blue pigment at upper right edge and a few pinhole sized spots of restoration at hair that fill the pores of the canvas. Framed.
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Revered as an exceptionally versatile artist who ceaselessly assimilated an array of aesthetic traditions in his works, Cheong Soo Pieng was a pioneering visionary at the dawn of Singapore’s modern art era. To classify his paintings as adherent to any specific style would be far too restraining. His early works in particular, such as the present lot, serve as an important mark of his development as one of the most influential Chinese artists of his generation. Soo Pieng was the co-founder of the Nanyang School of Art, where he and artists Liu Kang, Chen Wen Hsi and Chen Chong Swee advanced and sustained a fine artistic tradition. They synthesized techniques ranging from artistic activity in China to the School of Paris, such that the end product was an integration of Western, Javanese, Malay, Indian and Chinese traditions. 

Soo Pieng began his career as a fledgling artist at the age of 16 when he joined the Xiamen Academy of Fine Art. He subsequently moved to Shanghai to study at the Xin Hwa Academy of Fine Art, where he was exposed to Western concepts such as abstraction, cubism and surrealism. His time in Shanghai was abruptly curtailed in 1938 during the Sino-Japanese war, when the Japanese destroyed the academy, forcing the artist to return to Xiamen to teach. In 1945, he journeyed to Hong Kong for a transitory period, and then in 1946 permanently relocated to Singapore.

Soo Pieng’s artistic practice almost instantaneously changed once he stepped foot in Singapore. Comfortable in his own studio space at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, he delved into a stint of experimentation that would later shape the development of the Nanyang style.^[i] The present lot was painted during his preliminary years in Singapore, when the artist was pondering the differences between the complexions of people he observed in his native China and those of the foreigners he was now encountering in Singapore. Always inspired by the physical aspect of ethnicity, he began producing a plethora of works depicting Indian, Chinese, Malay and Caucasian figures.

This oil painting serves as a pristine example of the artist’s formative attempt to represent the female in portraiture: a rudimentary subject that contradicts the onus of expectation. By reducing the details of his composition, Soo Pieng could concentrate primarily on line, form, space and color. He exaggerates the woman’s facial features, which become the vanguard of focus: her heavy-lidded eyes tilt upwards beneath arched brows, each illustrated with two sinuous brushstrokes. Mimicking the form of her long, aquiline nose is her extended neck. The graceful forms and soft colors of her face serve to emphasize the abundant, undulating hair crowning her, which is saturated with color. With thick, definite outlines, Soo Pieng delineates her sharp features, a Fauvist technique echoing that which was used by Andre Derain. Employing the line as an artistic foundation is practice that Soo Pieng would explore even further in his later works.

A sense of reticence, intensified by her shut, rose-bud lips, pervades the unperturbed mood. Though her lowered shoulders are frontally positioned, the subject mysteriously gazes obliquely from the canvas without acknowledging the viewer. This anonymous, contemplative woman does not glance directly at you, but her swan-like posture suggests that she is cognizant of your scrutiny.

Given the sporadic and bold colors coupled with linear facets, it is evident that the artist was reconnoitering Western modernism. Light shining from the left side histrionically blankets half the woman’s face. Inspired by the likes of Gauguin, Braque and Picasso, Soo Pieng imbues a sculptural quality to the painted subject by fragmenting her form: her neck is divided into two segments with varying gradations, while the nose is reduced to an angular sliver protruding from her face. Similar to Picasso’s Portrait of Marie-Thérèse (ref 3), Soo Pieng’s image is divided into simplified and defined geometric shapes. The year 1949 was a prolific one for Soo Pieng, during which he was also making woodblock prints, a medium which compels an artist to depict overlapping spaces and three-dimensionality by disjointing anatomy. The vivid blue backdrop, which is painted expressively with visible horizontal and vertical strokes, reveals some of the canvas behind it.

The element of immediacy perceptible in this work is almost nonexistent in his later works, such as the more intricate picture Two Sisters which he painted towards the end of his life. Untitled (Balinese Girl) fittingly demonstrates Soo Pieng’s evolution as an artist, as it is at once stylized, akin to his later works, and painterly, with touches of modernism.  Though his unfailing métier was to portray humanist qualities that inspired him, he would continually pursue fresh styles of representation due to his insatiable appetite for new modes of expression. He would later journey to other lands and further study varying indigenous female forms, his vision already filtered with Western artistic principles such as Expressionism and Cubism that he had used in these initial years. The present lot marks the first time an early work from this pure, Modernist style appears at auction. As an artist who induced a generation of young painters to emulated his oeuvre, this early work is integral to understanding the development of a painter whose works truly encapsulate the inventive spirit of the Nanyang movement.

^[i] Yeo Wei Wei, Cheong Soo Pieng: Visions of Southeast Asia, The National Art Gallery, Singapore, 2010, p. 117